ISY3006: Strategic Security Policy Report on Walmart Security

This report presents a strategic security plan for Walmart, a multinational retail business. It begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction that defines strategic security plans and their importance. The discussion section explores Walmart's nature of business, its stakeholders (investors, customers, employees, and suppliers), and their respective priorities. The report addresses the requirements of a strategic security policy, including intelligence programs, risk management, and incident management. It identifies potential threats to Walmart's network, such as computer viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, DDoS attacks, and phishing attacks. Countermeasures for these threats are suggested. The report is based on a case study of Walmart Australia. The report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Walmart's security posture and potential vulnerabilities, offering insights into risk management and security policy development.

Running Head: STRATEGIC SECURITY POLICY
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STRATEGIC SECURITY POLICY: A Case Study of Walmart
Word Count: 2000

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Executive Summary
Strategic security plan can be defined as the document or a plan that is organized to outline the
primary security concerns of an organization or country and also provides knowledge regarding
the mitigation of those identified risks and the vulnerable threats associated with the company. It
can be said that security strategic plan plays an important role in an organization. It helps an
organization to develop the business and ensure the business growth. This report contains a
strategic security plan for Walmart business such that the business can identify all vulnerable risk
and threats. The plan also provides some mitigating measures for the identified risk and threats
which allow the business to operate seamlessly.

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Discussion............................................................................................................................3
Nature of business and Stakeholder of the organization.................................................3
Question 1........................................................................................................................5
Question 2........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................7
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
All business organizations handle and develop security strategic plans for their all
business operations. These strategic plans describe the requirement and the impact of all actions
or the business operations. Thus strategic security plan can be defined as the document or a plan
that is organized to outline the primary security concerns of an organization or country and also
provides knowledge regarding the mitigation of those identified risks and the vulnerable threats
associated with the organization. It can be said that security strategic plan plays an important role
in an organization. It helps an organization to develop the business and ensure the business
growth. This security helps the organization to determine the risks and the vulnerable threats
associated with the organization and also helps the organization by providing some counter
measures to avoid all the identified threats or risks of the organization. This particular report
mainly develops or formulate a strategic security plan for a business. The chosen business for
this report is Supermarket. The report clearly describes a strategic security plan for Walmart
Australia. The report also identify all the vulnerable threats associated with the business and also
provide some counter measures to handle all these identified threats or risks of the organization.
Discussion
Nature of business and Stakeholder of the organization
Walmart Inc. is a multinational American retail business which operates as a chain of
discount department stores, grocery stores and hypermarkets. The business is headquartered in
Bentonville, Arkansas. The business comprises of 11389 outlet operating in 27 different
countries. Walmart is considered as the globe’s greatest organization with respect to the revenue
which is considered as US$514.405 billion (Walmart.com | Save Money. Live Better 2019). It
also contains the highest number of employees in its organization where the organization
comprises of more than 2.2 million employees. The business is providing quality products to the
people across the world.
The strategic direction of Walmart ensure the business development for them. These
stakeholders are the people or group of people associated either directly or indirectly with the
organization. Walmart comprises of numerous stakeholders who helps them to operate
seamlessly. The stakeholders of the Walmart can be divided in some groups depending on their

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shared interests. Each of these groups have identical priority (Harrison and Wicks 2013). The
priority level is considered or allocated by the organization’s policies and beliefs. The various
groups of the stakeholders are Investors, Customers, Employees and the Suppliers.
 Investors: The investors of the Walmart mainly aims in profit. The people of this group
always desire to have the business with more profits. The investors are also responsible to
decrease the operational cost of the business. When the investors reduces the operational
cost the organization automatically profits a greater share and thus helps in business
development. The investors associated with Walmart are prioritized according to their
strategies or capabilities. Walmart always aims to provide the product at the minimum
cost to their customer which increases the sale of the business (Barber and Odean 2013).
Every business focuses to achieve their individual business goal and this goal is achieved
by increasing the profit of the organization.
 Customers: Customers are the primary group of the stakeholder for the Walmart. Not
only Walmart, the customers are the major driving force for any type of business
development. When an organization lower the prices of its product, the business is able to
involve more customers to their business and allow the business to increase the sales of
the organization which allow the business to increase the sales of the business
(Osterwalder et al. 2014). Similarly, in case of Walmart, the business focuses to lower the
price of its products which helps them to involve more people into their business and
allow the customer to shop from their business efficiently. People usually prefer to shop a
product from the retailer directly which allow them to get their desired product at the
minimum price. Walmart sells their product at the retail price. In this way, the
organization maintains the cost leadership generic strategy that deals with providing the
product at lowest price. In this context, it can be said that Walmart is a successful
organization to involve more people into their business (Womack and Jones 2015). The
number of customers is increasing day by day. This allow the business to develop itself in
a rapid manner.
 Employees: Another effective stakeholder group of Walmart is the employees group.
People who are working in the organization are said to be the employees of Walmart. As
mentioned above Walmart consists of maximum employees than other organization. With
the business development the business of Walmart increase their variety of products

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which require more people to handle the roles and responsibilities. This group comprises
of main two points: higher wages and job security (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain
2014). Job security is provided by the Walmart which ensures them to remain in their
respective job roles and responsibilities. With the development of the business the
Walmart also focuses to pay higher wages to their employees which keeps them
motivated in their respective domain and also allow them to operate their operation
efficiently.
 Suppliers: Suppliers are the stakeholders who sell products to the Walmart store. The
main motive of suppliers is not only to sell the products but also to sell the product at the
acceptable price (Kannan, de Sousa Jabbour and Jabbour 2014). A small increase in the
price of the product can hugely impact both the suppliers and Walmart.
Question 1
The main motive of the strategic security policy is to provide an approach to Walmart for
managing the information risks as well as the directives to protect all information assets
associated with the business. Strategic security policy of Walmart includes some element within
it such as intelligence program, Privacy program, Authority Controls, Risk management
program, Audit as well as compliance program, incident management, Operational management,
Education and awareness program, Technical and access security controls, Asset classification
and identification, Enforcement and physical security and employee related management
methods (Andrews-Speed, Liao and Dannreuther 2014). Security strategic plan involves three
main process like identification of the current status of the organization, identification o9f the
business objective and then proper execution of a plan to achieve the business goals. Walmart as
a supermarket always aims to increase the number of customers which increases the profit of the
business. Each and every operations of Walmart is driven by the IT devices or information
system. Countermeasures are prepared in case of any business disaster or crisis which helps
Walmart to operate seamlessly even after any disaster or crisis (Faruqui 2019). Risk assessment
is conducted to identify all possible risks and threats. Risk assessment also helps Walmart to
mitigate all risks and threats associated to the assets of the business (Daniel and Herbig 2013).
All assets should be handled by some experts who have proper knowledge regarding the systems
and also has an ability to overcome any issue occurred in the system. All access controls should
be monitored by an IT administrator. Authentication and authorization controls should be

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accessed only to the business officials and the registered customers (Mix 2013). All stakeholders
should maintain all rules and regulations of the business. Some actions should be taken
immediately if any stakeholder disobey or violate the rules or policies of the business.
Question 2
All operations of Walmart are driven by the network structure of the business. Thus
networking layer of the organization plays an important role in business operation of Walmart
(Von Solms and Van Niekerk 2013). Some possible potential threats or risk associated with the
Walmart business are as follows:
 Computer Virus: Walmart business deals with many sensitive information every day
and thus all business assets should be secured strongly such that it can avoid any
vulnerable attack caused by these viruses. Computer viruses duplicate all files of
Walmart and the hacker can achieve all the sensitive information related to the business
of Walmart. These sensitive information includes details of customer, details of
employees, product details, and details of various stakeholders of the business
(Stephenson and Gilbert 2013). Computer viruses can be handled by installing a proper
and safe antivirus software in all computer systems of the Walmart business.
 Trojan horse: Each and Every employees of the business should be aware of the Trojan
horse attack. In this type of attack an employee can be tricked by an attacker. The
attacker can force an official to visit to a malicious site which can impact negatively to
the business of Walmart and thus the network administrator should block all kinds of ads
and external hyperlinks such that the business can operate seamlessly (Mislin and Schalk
2014).
 Spyware and Adware: In this attack the attacker can track all operations of business.
The attacker can get the access by tracking all the activity of the business officials and
also can conduct some vulnerable activities by logging in the official website or portal.
This should be monitored by the IT manager and the assets should be configured in such
a way that it can be accessed only by the authorized user or employees of the business of
Walmart. Spyware and adware operates similarly but in case of spyware the application is
installed in the computer system of the business official without his or her knowledge.

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Thus it increases the risk factor of the business as it increases the probability of the
identity theft of the business.
 DDoS attack: It can be performed by an attacker by flooding the official website of
Walmart such that the users are unable to access the portal or website of the business and
the business operation can be put to hold. This will impact negatively to the business
productivity of the Walmart and also can harm the business reputations (Wang et al.
2015). The most important fact of DDoS attack is that it can be spread from one
computer system to another quickly and thus the attack can be spread staring from one
system to thousand systems. This attack can be a complex issue for the Walmart as the
attack is difficult to track or detect. Moreover the attack is difficult to handle. Thus the
highest priority of Walmart is to prepare some countermeasure for the DDoS attack.
 Phishing attack: In this attack the attacker gain an unauthorized access to the network of
the Walmart. All authentication details are hacked by the attacker such that he or she can
gain access to the portal and can conduct some vulnerable activities. This attack should
be immediately resisted by the Walmart. This can be done by using multifactor
authentication which will include biometric as well as password authentication from the
user. If the fingerprint matches and the password is matched then only a user can access
all business operations of Walmart (Arachchilage and Love 2014). This will help the
business to secure all the sensitive information strongly and will not allow other user to
easily gain access of the website or the organizational network.
 SQL injection Attack: The database used by Walmart is designed using SQL. This leads
to the vulnerable SQL injection attack. The application software are force to face some
vulnerable attack by the attacker where the attack can alter all the data of the database
which can impact negatively to the business operation of Walmart. This can be mitigated
using some efficient monitoring tool by the network administrator such that he or she can
monitor all the operations done in the database of the business.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be concluded that Walmart is a successful supermarket operating in
various zones of the world. Walmart involves numerous business operations to provide the
product to the common people seamlessly and thus according to this report all business

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operations should be secured or efficient such that the business profit can be increased. The
report also showcased that Walmart provides the product at the lowest price to their customers
which helps them to involve more customers in their business. The network architecture of the
business involves numerous vulnerable risks and threats. Those risks and threats are listed in the
form of strategic security policy plan of Walmart. The identified risks can also be mitigated
using some countermeasures. The report also discussed some mitigating measures to the business
officials of the Walmart.

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References
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Arachchilage, N.A.G. and Love, S., 2014. Security awareness of computer users: A phishing
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Barber, B.M. and Odean, T., 2013. The behavior of individual investors. In Handbook of the
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Daniel, D.C. and Herbig, K.L. eds., 2013. Strategic military deception: Pergamon policy studies
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Faruqui, A., 2019. Rethinking the national security of Pakistan: The price of strategic myopia.
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Korschun, D., Bhattacharya, C.B. and Swain, S.D., 2014. Corporate social responsibility,
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Mislin, G.L. and Schalk, I.J., 2014. Siderophore-dependent iron uptake systems as gates for
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computers & security, 38, pp.97-102.
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